THE CONVERGENCE OF BSS AND POLICY
EXPERT OPINION:
The light at the end of the congested bandwidth pipe The mobile web is one of the richest veins of opportunity today for Communications Service providers (CSPs) – and presents one of the greatest challenges, writes Alice Bartram Driven by advanced devices and bandwidthintensive applications, exponentially growing data traffic on limited pipes can degrade the user experience due to congestion management issues. With all of this traffic growth, one would expect revenues to soar. However, ironically, the flat-rate plans that worked so well to hook customers in the penetration phase are now greatly impeding mobile data revenue growth. How can CSPs capitalise on mobile broadband uptake? With three key considerations: pricing/ charging flexibility, better network management and an improved customer experience. Combining BSS and Policy: The way forward The huge increases in mobile internet traffic have caused an acute need for a centralised, flexible and scalable policy solution, but early forays into use of policy quickly revealed that looking at policy just in terms of the network is limiting – both to subscribers and to the operator’s business. Instead a multi-dimensional approach to policy management is required. Multi-Dimensional Policy Management, ties together all aspects of the customer relationship, network resource management and monetisation when defining and enforcing policies and pricing schemes. The combination enables data rate plans to correspond directly with customers’ class of service, with detailed real-time usage information – including service type and network status – being made available to the charging system. This provides the ability to smartly charge based on any combination of service, application, content or website, network condition or device type, facilitating quick and easy definition of segmented data plans that are both subscriber- and network-aware. Industry analysts are convinced that interdependencies between policy and BSS elements require solutions that combine and unify them. A leading analyst notes that all four functions – policy management, enforcement, DPI (deep packet inspection) and real-time rating and charging – working together, can enable an effective customer-focused policy strategy that can flexibly define competitive offers to support the operational needs of the advanced services that customers have come to expect.
Another prominent analyst emphasises that the, “...appeal of linking policy with the BSS is that it aligns activities more closely with customer data. If policy controls and enforcement are preintegrated or part of the BSS, it can reduce costs, time to market, and the risks associated with deployment.” Bringing multi-dimensional policy management and smart data charging into the realm of reality will require dismantling of siloed ecosystems not merely extending these with ‘bolt on’ solutions. Critical success factors When planning a move towards a comprehensive end-to-end solution, look for solutions that provide: •
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The author, Alice Bartram, is associate vice president at Comverse
A unified information base: Complete, current and consistent customer and product information available at every interaction Unified functionality: Combined policy management, enforcement (including DPI) and comprehensive BSS functionality spanning critical business functions such as sales, marketing, customer and order management, real-time rating and charging and billing Pre-configured business flows: To address most common business issues out-of-thebox – reducing deployment time and risk Centralised provisioning: A single creation and provisioning point for all data plans and their underlying policies
Such a solution exists in Comverse ONE Billing & Active Customer Management. This modular, high-performance, highly-scalable converged BSS system provides critical business functions and deep-rooted in-network capabilities that span policy management and enforcement, all unified around a single data model and product catalogue. This unification removes complexity for an operator and removes translation between disparate systems – sources of cost, slow timeto-market, and poor customer experience. With Comverse ONE, a multi-dimensional approach to policy management and smart data charging are available now to all CSPs looking to make their networks smarter. VANILLAPLUS APRIL/MAY 2011
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